Detroit Free Press Staff Writer

But here in metro Detroit, the biggest fashion trend of the summer is the T-shirt -- specifically T-shirts that tout our love for and loyalty to the city of Detroit.

Defend Detroit, the shirts say.

I love you Detroit.

Made in Detroit.

I have people in Detroit.

"I love my city, and one way to represent your city is by wearing a shirt," says Vilma Dennis, who is 43, lives in Royal Oak and has enough T-shirts to wear a different one every day of the week.

In stores all over town, Detroit T-shirts -- once worn largely by hipsters intent on making sincere political statements or social commentary so people wouldn't forget about the city -- are more plentiful and popular than ever with the mainstream.

"People get so excited when they come in here and see all the T-shirts we have," says Margarita Barry, owner of D:Pop, a small shop in downtown Detroit that stocks about 100 T-shirt styles, including her own Bohomodern brand. "It seems like they get kind of a rush in challenging themselves to find the coolest Detroit T-shirt to wear," Barry adds.

Once dominated by just a couple companies -- Pure Detroit and Made in Detroit, for example -- the T-shirt business seems to grow almost daily as new companies emerge.

There's Detroit Shirt Co., Detroit Manufacturing Co., Fist of Detroit, Ducky Detroit, Common Threads Clothing and on and on and on ...

This year, Gorski's business -- which he founded last year after being laid off from an advertising firm -- is up about 20% over 2011.

"You can get a shirt for your friend, you can get a shirt for yourself, a family member. I have a phrase on my shirts that everybody can relate to -- 'I have people in Detroit.' Everybody has somebody who doesn't live here anymore. ...Maybe I have a product everybody wants."

And, in a sense, he is absolutely correct.

The mainstream thinks Detroit is cool -- not in the way that New York or Los Angeles might be cool, but in an underdog kind of way. It's cool because it keeps scraping along despite violence and corruption and unemployment and all its other problems.

And it seems to be recovering. The auto companies are rebounding. The city's Midtown area is full of activity. Workers are transferring to downtown office buildings.

"I think Detroit has a certain cachet today it didn't have five years ago, four years ago," says Michael Bernacchi, marketing professor at the University of Detroit Mercy. "Detroit stands for something besides Kwame Kilpatrick, difficulty, crime, the rest of it. Folks want to be identified with what's happening."

Everyone wants to be part of the latest new thing.

"Detroit shirts are riding the hipness of the Detroit brand right now," says Ken Nisch, chairman of JGA, a Southfield-based retail design and brand strategy firm. "If somebody wants to wear the Detroit brand and walk around with it, that's a good sign."

But some believe the original intent of the shirts may be fading.

"Suburbanites ... are wearing Detroit shirts to bars without understanding the values and missions (they) had in the beginning," says Nisch. The shirts, he adds, have "moved past political statement into fashion statement."

Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

I don't know.

What I do know is fashion is forever changing.

Hemlines rise and fall. Colors go in and out. Maxi dresses and side braids, so popular now, could be completely passť tomorrow.

Which makes me wonder: How long will it be fashionable for us to love Detroit?